Content descriptions

No rights for students -- The "fixed star" -- Buttons and armbands -- A new era -- Supreme retractions -- Bong hits -- Columbine -- The dress debate -- The new frontier -- The fragile future.

Summary:

This book details the rich history and growth of the First Amendment in public schools, from the early nineteenth-century's failed student free-expression claims, to the development of protection for students by the U.S. Supreme Court. The author brings this history alive by drawing from interviews with key student litigants in famous cases, including John Tinker of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District and Joe Frederick of the 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' case, Morse v. Frederick. He goes on to discuss the raging free-speech controversies in public schools today, including dress codes and uniforms, cyberbullying, and the regulation of any violent-themed expression in a post-Columbine and Virginia Tech environment. He tells of adolescent Jehovah's Witnesses defending their right to refuse to salute the flag; of Pearl Pugsley, who defied her school's sexist rule against wearing makeup; and of teenager Adam Porter, whose drawing of his school under attack got him expelled and tossed in jail for four days. Through these stories and landmark cases, the author pays homage to those defiant youths and to the courts that insist that students do not, in the words of Justice Abe Fortas. "Shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."